Media Mentions

Vice President Mike Pence defended the diminished role of Washington in the latest health care bill introduced in the Senate by citing ardent anti-Federalist Thomas Jefferson..."Thomas Jefferson said, ‘Government that governs least governs best,’ " Pence said. "I mean, the question that people ought to ask is, who do you think will be more responsive to the healthcare needs in your community? Your governor and your state legislature, or a congressman and a president in a far off nation’s capital?" It must be nice to have Jefferson on your side — except Jefferson didn’t say it. "This comes up a lot," said Annette Gordon-Reed, a Harvard legal history professor who has written extensively about Jefferson.

Micheal Baca has become the third Colorado presidential elector to join a federal lawsuit against Secretary of State Wayne Williams alleging Williams violated their constitutional rights by making threats and removing Baca as an elector ahead of the high-drama 2016 Electoral College vote...The lawsuit was announced in August by Equal Citizens, an advocacy group founded by Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, and filed on behalf of two Democratic electors, Polly Baca (unrelated to Micheal) and Robert Nemanich...“The Constitution vests in electors the choice for whom they will vote,” Lessig said in a news release Wednesday announcing Baca has joined the lawsuit.

A rich candidate campaigns as a representative of the common man against a shadowy elite, but once in office governs in ways that support and enrich people like him...To understand the phenomenon of populist plutocrats, a Harvard conference on Saturday will host a gathering of analysts who will discuss political leaders from Italy, Thailand, the Philippines, Peru, and South Africa who share at least some of the expressed characteristics. In advance of the session, the Gazette interviewed Harvard Law School Professor Matthew Stephenson, who is one of the organizers and who researches anticorruption from an international and comparative perspective, about how the gathering aims to help people learn lessons from around the world about how populist plutocracy works.

An op-ed by Mark Tushnet. Next week is “Free Speech Week” at the University of California Berkeley. Conservative speakers, some very incendiary, are scheduled to appear in public spaces — the storied Sproul Plaza, the nearby Mario Savio Steps — offering their views on feminism, Islam, and more. Maybe the organizers really want to gather an audience that will listen to what the speakers have to say — the list seems quite fluid, but the names of alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, anti-Islamic polemicist Pamela Geller, and former White House strategist Steve Bannon have been bandied about — and exit with changed minds. Mostly, though, they want to lay down a marker at what they regard as a center of intolerance for conservative views. And they probably expect some disruptions that will, they hope, discredit their opponents.

An essay by Mark Mortensen and Heidi K. Gardner...Across the world, senior managers and team leaders are increasingly frustrated by conflicts arising from what we refer to as “multiteaming”—having their people assigned to multiple projects simultaneously. But given the significant benefits of multiteaming, it has become a way of organizational life. It allows groups to share individuals’ time and brainpower across functional and departmental lines. It also increases efficiency and provides pathways for knowledge transfer. As clear as these advantages are, the costs are substantial and need to be managed.

An essay by Cass Sunstein. The American colonies imported the idea of impeachment from England, where Edmund Burke called it the “great guardian of the purity of the Constitution.” But from 1750 to 1775 republican fervor was running rampant, and the colonists made the idea all their own. Long before shots were fired in Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, colonial assemblies used impeachment as a homegrown weapon of republican government, rebuking the King’s agents for the abuse or misuse of power.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The Trump administration has a real opportunity to deliver on its promise to streamline the regulatory state. That opportunity comes from the proposed elimination of more than 50 regulations imposed on the airline industry -- many of them designed to protect safety. Air safety has been a sensational success story. In the U.S., commercial accidents have been at very low levels for years.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. As Donald Trump’s administration enters its ninth month, it’s worth considering a surprising possibility: Things have never been better in the turbulent period since the president took office. Trump’s most blatantly unconstitutional actions, like the travel ban on immigrants from a number of majority Muslim nations, have been blocked by the courts. Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn and Sebastian Gorka are out of power. The reasonable generals (John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, James Mattis) are in. The repeal of the Affordable Care Act has failed (so far). A deal with Democrats on DACA, the policy allowing undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to stay, is in the offing. There will be no wall, paid for by Mexico or otherwise, on the southern border. Dangerously extreme tax reform seems unlikely to pass.

The Colorado Electoral College member who went rogue by not casting an official ballot for Hillary Clinton in December is suing Secretary of State Wayne Williams claiming Williams violated his constitutional rights by removing and replacing him and not counting his vote...National election law expert and Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig filed the federal complaint in Denver district court in mid-August, and says he is filing a new one today adding Micheal Baca’s name...Lessig says the plaintiffs aren’t in the lawsuit for money and have capped their damages at a dollar. He says he hopes for a quick ruling that answers the question about whether members of the Electoral College can vote their consciences. “Regardless of what you believe the law is, it’s really important that it be clear before the next election,” he says.

Over the course of four centuries, Harvard has seen presidents of many stripes. They’ve been clergymen and classicists, ambassadors and governors, chemists and botanists, and secretaries of State and the Treasury. Their training and trades may have varied—but to date, all have been white. And, until current University President Drew G. Faust, male...Ten years later, some would like to see Harvard make history yet again. “The school has made wonderful strides with respect to the student population,” Law professor and Winthrop Faculty Dean Ronald Sullivan said. “There’s still work to be done with respect to the faculty, and there’s even more work that needs to be done with respect to the top levels of administrators at the University.”

Last November, some political commentators predicted that Donald Trump’s unconventional candidacy might give way to a much more conventional presidency. Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith argues that perhaps the opposite is true – that eight months into his term, Donald Trump is fundamentally changing the office of the president.

Amid the unwelcome glare of the Sept. 11 shooting death of Carlos Munoz Portal — a Narcos location scout killed on the job in the rural region north of Mexico City — Netflix must also contend with an ongoing trademark dispute with the family of Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug kingpin dramatized in the hit series...According to Rebecca Tushnet, a Harvard Law School professor who focuses on copyright and trademark law, it's unlikely that Escobar Inc. could have a trademark claim to "Narcos" — a word which has come to mean anyone involved in the drug-cartel trade. "It's possible to have trademarks that are the same for different goods and services. For example; Delta Airlines, Delta Dental, Delta Faucet," Tushnet says. "But at least some of the goods and services in the applications are overlapping.

An op-ed by Chiraag Bains. In January 2012, Sheriff Doug Gillespie of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department sent a team to Washington, D.C. to ask the Justice Department for help. The LVMPD had been the subject of a five-part series published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal just months before. The paper’s investigation covered 20 years of shootings by the department. It concluded that many of the incidents were avoidable and accused the LVMPD of being an “insular” agency that celebrated “a hard-charging police culture while often failing to learn from its mistakes.” Two weeks after the last piece ran, an LVMPD officer killed an unarmed, mentally ill, black veteran.

...the guests were witnessing the product of a clever and thoughtful arts collaboration between Clayton and the Harvard Art Museums. This year’s celebration was the fourth iteration of the popular event, which draws many returning students as well as a plethora of freshmen. The autumnal festivity introduces students to the museums and highlights the role that they can play in their lives...It was the first time at the museums for Harvard Law School students Cortney Robinson ’18 and Demarquin Johnson ’20. “I thought it was a good chance to be introduced to the museum,” said Robinson.

An interview with Noah Feldman. An Intelligence Squared debate about the most pressing global challenges facing the Trump administration. Prominent foreign policy experts debate what to do about North Korea, and our strategic relationships with China and other countries.

An essay by Jeannie Suk Gersen. In 2015, Laura Kipnis, a film-studies professor at Northwestern University, published a polemic in The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe.” Kipnis argued that students’ sense of vulnerability on campus was expanding to an unwarranted degree, partly owing to new enforcement policies around Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal funds. The new Title IX policies on sexual misconduct which were then sweeping campuses perpetuated “myths and fantasies about power,” Kipnis wrote, which enlarged the invasive power of institutions while undermining the goal of educating students in critical thinking and resilience. “If you wanted to produce a pacified, cowering citizenry, this would be the method,” she concluded.

An article by Glenn Cohen, Sharona Hoffman, and Eli Y. Adashi. The mugger's demand “Your money or your life” is a familiar one. However, in an era of vast hospital computer networks and electronic health records, a novel risk to worry about is, “Your money or your patient's life.” This threat, known as “ransomware,” is an increasingly common experience for computer users around the world. The relevance of this hazard to health care became widely apparent on 12 May 2017 after a global attack effected by ransomware named WannaCry. Among those most severely affected were hospitals, pharmacies, and clinics of the British National Health Service.

If President Trump spoke with Paul Manafort while his former campaign manager was being wiretapped, experts say there's no quick legal route to disclose the existence or content of intercepted calls. Public disclosure isn't guaranteed because two reported wiretap orders targeting Manafort were issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, rather than via the ordinary criminal wiretap statute...Former federal judge Nancy Gertner, a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School, said "the transcript will not be released unless there is an indictment and a public trial."

Harvard unveiled the list of students who will formally weigh in on the University’s ongoing presidential search Tuesday—the last of three advisory committees the search committee promised to appoint after University President Drew G. Faust announced she will step down next summer. Third-year Law student and Cabot House tutor Jyoti Jasrasaria ’12 [`18] will chair the 18-member committee, which includes at least one representative from each of Harvard’s 12 degree-granting schools. Students will “provide advice to the presidential search committee” and “assist in ensuring broad outreach to the wider Harvard community,” according to the announcement.

Vanguard Group needs its hands-off investor base to pay attention. On Nov. 15 the world’s largest mutual fund company will stage its broadest shareholder meeting in eight years and needs enough individual investors to vote on measures such as installing three new fund board members including Tim Buckley, who is set to take over as Vanguard chief executive in January....Stephen Davis, a senior fellow at Harvard Law School, said fund governance rules, dating from 1940, could use an update to give investors more regular input. As things stand now, Vanguard’s investors “are not acclimated to participating,” he said. “There’s no track record of them having to do that.”

A School of Public Health student is among a half dozen undocumented young people suing President Donald Trump over his move to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Filed in a San Francisco federal court Monday, the lawsuit charges that the Trump administration violated the due process rights of young people protected from deportation under DACA...The lawsuit’s other plaintiffs include two middle school teachers who work with at-risk youth, a formerly homeless attorney, a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology, and a law student. Harvard Law professor Laurence H. Tribe ’62 is on the legal team providing the Dreamers pro bono counsel.